It’s an Abbott bashfest today but, sheesh, he’s got it coming. Here is the latest blunder from yesterday:
“So, in conclusion let me say, we will deliver a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme. What tweaks might possibly occur will depend very much on the course of discussions with the Senate early in the new year. Likewise, everything else. They all know what we are trying to achieve. Everyone knows where this Government’s heart is. Everyone knows what this Government’s fundamental commitments are. Our heart is with a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme. Our heart is with a country that can look its kids and grandkids in the eye and say, ‘We are not leaving you with unsustainable debt; we are not going to practice intergenerational theft to sustain our own spending'”
Despite facing opposition from nearly everyone – the media, the opposition parties, economists and policy experts, and even colleagues within the Coalition – for being inequitable and a waste of scarce taxpayer dollars, Abbott continues to forge on with “a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme”.
In the process, the Prime Minister is blowing a large and ongoing hole in the Budget, undermining the Government’s message of “ending the age of entitlement” , as well as needing to trim expenditure to overcome the so-called “Budget emergency”.
It is both poor policy and politics – something Abbott’s mentor, John Howard, would never have done.
The Prime Minister’s claim that “we are not leaving you with unsustainable debt; we are not going to practice intergenerational theft to sustain our own spending” is even more delusional. How exactly does jacking-up younger Australian’s university debts, cutting access to unemployment benefits for six months for under-30s, and opening the sluice gates to 457 visas when youth labour underutilsation is running at 30%, improve inter-generational equity?
The Prime Minister’s claims are all the more galling given the Budget left untouched the massive concessions on superannuation, negative gearing, and capital gains taxes, which overwhelmingly benefit the older generations at the expense of the young, including by increasing the tax burden on ordinary workers, as well as raising younger Australian’s housing costs (and mortgage debts).
Tony Abbott is either delusional or being deliberately obtuse as he attempts a big electoral bribe to solve his “women problem”.
